Preparing The Road For Others

Preparing the road for others

Luke 3:1 – 6?

Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

?1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was ?governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was ?tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of ?Abilene, 2 in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to ?John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. 3 And he came into all the district ?around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins;?

?4 as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, ?

?“THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ?

?‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, ?

MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.?

? 5 ? ?‘aEVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED, ?

AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE BROUGHT LOW; ?

THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT, ?

AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH;?

? 6 ? AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.’”?

Even if someone baptized you as an infant somewhere along the way, you still had to ?decide to accept Jesus into your heart. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you chose ?to be baptized when you were older than an infant or as an adult. Here you probably ?decided for yourself that you wanted to declare to the congregation and to yourself ?that Jesus was your Lord and Savior, and you believe God offered salvation through ?an understanding of faith in the acts of Jesus.?

For me, that occurred as an adult when I was 35 years old. A road had to be paved ?into my heart to enable me to see the work of Jesus was for the salvation that he ?offered. My impressions of the church until then was that the church was only after ?my money. I had gone to church several times with my lovely bride and our three ?children and always experienced the asking for money. Unfortunately, this fueled the ?feelings I had about church long before I ever stepped into one. That is a reputation ?that the church has and it’s quite sad.?

I’m going to spend just a moment on how the church got such a reputation. I went ?to a free concert at a church. The concert featured a local Christian band, and they ?did a wonderful job with their music and their singing. It left a powerful impression ?on me. However, in the middle of the band's second set, they offered a plea through ?the pastor of the church for money so that they could continue their music ministry. ?To me, the concert that was advertised as free turned into a concert that required ?payment. When that offering plate came to me, it felt like the entire audience was ?waiting to see how much I was going to put in. That was the last time I went to ?anything that the church said was free. From that point on, I knew that there was no ?free lunch, as I quote President Ronald Reagan.?

By the way, that experience put a big pothole in the road into my heart for Jesus to ?have to travel upon. That pothole had to be filled, and Pastor Don Stover did it ?beautifully. He had a policy that once a month the children’s choir had to sing at the ?Sunday worship. My bride is an excellent singer, taught the children and took them ?to church regularly. They were in the children’s choir. Once a month I was told you ?have to come see your children sing and that brought me into the church. Once I ?was there, it was Pastor Don Stover’s preaching that started me to think about Jesus ?and church differently.?

The road still needed to be paved, and the curves needed to be removed before I ?was ready to come to the Lord. This was done when I read the book, the “Road less ?traveled” by Scott Peck and ”The power of positive thinking” by Norman Vincent ?Peale, and the Gospels in a transliterated paraphrased form. I had my eyes opened ?by the kids singing and the three books. Or should I say, these three books ?straightened and paved the road into my heart, allowing Jesus to enter it.?

Evangelist will tell you it can take up to 10 times for someone to hear the gospel ?story until they react positively to it. I think those 10 times are really the paving and ?the straightening of the road into the heart. There has to be a reason that a person ?will look for God in order to find Jesus. Usually it’s a point in their lives or an event ?that kicks off the search. What I have discovered is that many adults between the ?ages of 35 and 45 look for a deeper meaning to life. For me, it started around 35 ?years old when I determined that just getting up in the morning, going to work, ?coming home and getting up and going to work the next day could not be the only ?thing I was going to do in my life.?